Kinship care — when grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, or other relatives or close family friends care for children who cannot live with their parents — is Australia's most common form of out-of-home care. Approximately 44,000 Australian children are in kinship care, compared to approximately 16,000 in formal foster care. Kinship carers often step up suddenly — when a parent becomes unable to care for a child through illness, incarceration, substance use, or family violence — and they do so with little preparation, training, or financial support. Grant funding supports kinship carer training, peer support, legal assistance, and the advocacy that improves kinship care policy.
Scale
Who are kinship carers?
Why children enter kinship care
The kinship carer experience
Kinship carers often:
- Step up suddenly, without preparation
- Give up retirement plans or employment
- Face significant financial pressure (supporting children on pension or low income)
- Have their own grief about the parent's situation
- Deal with children who have experienced trauma
- Lack information about services, entitlements, and rights
State child protection departments
Centrelink
Family Law Courts
AIHW (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare)
Data on kinship care.
Grandparents Australia
National organisation supporting grandparent carers.
Australian Kinship Care Network
Peak body for kinship care.
CREATE Foundation
Support for all children in out-of-home care including kinship.
Uniting Care
Kinship care support programmes.
Mission Australia
Kinship carer support.
Various state family support organisations
Community organisations providing kinship carer support.
Information and navigation
Legal assistance
Training and skills
Peer support
Financial assistance
Respite
Children's therapeutic support
Indigenous kinship care
Carer wellbeing
Advocacy and policy
For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, kinship goes far beyond Western definitions of family. The kinship system defines roles, responsibilities, and relationships across the community. When Aboriginal children cannot live with their parents, the community's kinship system typically provides care — this is culturally appropriate and should be supported, not disrupted.
However, Aboriginal kinship carers often receive less support than formal foster carers. Closing this gap is both an equity issue and a cultural safety issue.
Information gap
Many kinship carers don't know their rights, entitlements, or available services. Applications that provide accessible information and navigation support address the most immediate gap.
Legal pathway
Many kinship arrangements are informal — no legal parenting order, no certainty of care. Applications that fund legal assistance to formalise care give carers security and children stability.
Indigenous kinship
Applications specifically supporting Indigenous kinship carers — through culturally appropriate support, culturally safe services, and recognition of the broader Aboriginal kinship system — address a specific gap.
Payment parity
Kinship carers receive significantly less financial support than formal foster carers in most states, despite caring for the same children. Applications advocating for payment parity address a systemic inequity.
Tahua's grants management platform supports kinship care funders and carer support organisations — with carer registration tracking, support programme data, child outcome measurement, and the reporting tools that help kinship care funders demonstrate their investment in the children and families raising them outside the formal care system.